MPs and Twitter

I thought this might be an interesting question to examine. I’ve been gathering some Twitter usage data over the last week, and realised I was able to attempt an answer.

Percentage of current MPs on Twitter over time, by party (click the graph to enlarge).

If you can use the joining of Twitter as a rough measure of the uptake of the social media as a whole, then it is clear that the Liberal Democrats are more eager than the Labour Party, while the Conservatives are the most sluggish.

Proportionally, nearly twice as many Liberal Democrat MPs are on Twitter as Conservative MPs. The current proportion of Conservative MPs on Twitter is similar to the Liberal Democrats in September 2009.